LIVE STOCK BREEDERS. 135 



you from a social standpoint, from an economical standpoint and from a 

 financial standpoint, from the standpoint of comfort, of pleasure, of bus- 

 iness. It interests your stock, your advancement, your everything-, and 

 why it is that the American people, so enterprising- in every other respect, 

 should give such a left-handed, secondary, almost indifferent considera- 

 tion of the question of improving their highways, is one that has not yet 

 been solved. We demand the very best in everything else. We want 

 good level grades on railroads ; we want heavy rails ; we want splendid 

 road beds ; we want good substantial bridges ; we want every comfort in 

 the way of cars and every accommodation, we want rapid transit ; we de- 

 mand every facility of this kind. When we travel by water unless we 

 have some palatial boat we cruelly complain, say it is unbearable, unen- 

 durable unless we have every convenience of this kind, and at the same 

 time we will endure for ourselves, our families — our wives and our child- 

 ren and all who are nearest and dearest to us — the beast of burden that 

 serves us, the most ridiculously uncomfortable, miserable, conditions of 

 the common roads, dragging through the mud, over rocks, down through 

 gulleys and gutters, and every other condition, and go on doing it day 

 in and day out. We suffer in our schools, we suffer in business, and we 

 suffer every way from this condition and at the same time we do not g-ive 

 it that business application and determination to improve it that has made 

 the people of the United States far ahead of nearly every other people on 

 the face of the earth, in the advancement of industrial, commercial and 

 social conditions. 



The New York Chamber of Commerce several years ago after a 

 siege of what is known as the "mud blockade," by which their commer- 

 cial interests were so hampered and interfered with that it disturbed those 

 men and stopped them from watching the click of the Stock Exchange 

 and their business affairs, to inquire what the trouble was and when they 

 learned that it was the condition of the roads, they stopped to consider 

 for amoment and then proceeded to vote the sum of $10,000 and present- 

 ed it to the Government with the request that a Bureau or Division be 

 established by the United States Govermiient for the purpose of in- 

 quiry into the condition of the public roads of the country, and to suggest 

 along lines that might lead to their improvement. You know there al- 

 ways has been a very strong sentiment or jealous idea prevalent that the 

 question of State rights when applied to the improvement of roads, was 

 something very sacred, and that the Federal Government was encroach- 

 ing upon a time honored principle of this Government whenever it took 

 any interest in affairs pertaining to the improvement of the common roads. 

 We can touch it from any other direction. We may spend a vast amount 

 of money to improve rivers and harbors, although they are on the bor- 



